Introduction
Four writ petitions filed directly under Article 32 by convicts sentenced to “imprisonment for the remainder of natural life” — some through judicial sentencing, others following commutation of death sentences by the President under Article 72 — raised a common, far-reaching challenge: is such a sentence even known to law, and can the Supreme Court, exercising its writ jurisdiction, revisit sentences that have already been modified through presidential clemency? The Supreme Court has answered both questions against the petitioners, dismissing all four petitions as “misdirected.”
The Four Petitioners and Their Cases
1. Ramasrey @ Fakkad (WP Crl. 553/2023): Convicted under Sections 364A, 302 and 201 IPC, his death sentence was commuted by the Allahabad High Court to imprisonment for the remainder of natural life. His SLP against this was withdrawn in 2015. He argued that Section 302 IPC recognises only two sentences — death or life imprisonment — and that “remainder of natural life” imprisonment has no statutory basis.
2. Chander Kant Jha (WP Crl. 42/2024): Convicted under Sections 302 and 201 IPC and sentenced to death, his sentence was modified by the Delhi High Court to imprisonment for the remainder of natural life without remission — a modification the State’s own appeal against (seeking restoration of the death sentence) failed to dislodge.
3. Atbir Singh (WP Crl. 69/2025): Sentenced to death under Section 302/34 IPC, with the sentence confirmed right up to this Court’s dismissal of his appeal and subsequent review/curative petitions. His mercy petition was eventually accepted by the President in 2012, commuting his sentence to imprisonment for the remainder of natural life without parole. He additionally argued that the “remainder of natural life” concept was introduced by the Legislature only for sexual offences, and that such a sentence defeats his statutory right to seek remission under Section 432 CrPC.
4. Sarabjit Singh, Gurdev Singh @ Baldev Singh & Satnam Singh (WP Crl. 198/2025): Convicted under Sections 302/307/148/149 IPC and the Arms Act, and sentenced to death — confirmed by the High Court and this Court — their mercy petitions were similarly accepted, commuting their sentences to imprisonment for the remainder of natural life with no remission.
The Three Questions Framed by the Court
- Is the sentence of “imprisonment for the remainder of natural life” constitutional?
- Can the Supreme Court judicially review the exercise of the President’s clemency power under Article 72?
- Connectedly, can the Court, under Article 32 or Article 136, modify a sentence that has already been modified through the exercise of clemency power?
On Maintainability Under Article 32
The Attorney General for India raised a preliminary objection to maintainability. The Court reaffirmed that Article 32 — famously described by Dr. Ambedkar as the most important article of the Constitution and recognised as part of the basic structure in L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India (1997) 3 SCC 261 — provides a direct and important remedy, but is not available in all circumstances. Petitioners must show real necessity for bypassing ordinary remedies. The Court referenced Daryao v. State of U.P., Vasanta Sampat Dupare v. Union of India (2025 SCC OnLine SC 1823), and Bilkis Yakub Rasool v. Union of India (2024) 5 SCC 481 to underscore that this extraordinary jurisdiction demands clean hands and genuine grievance — not a shortcut around settled procedure.
On Judicial Review of Clemency Powers (Articles 72/161)
Drawing on a well-established line of precedent — Epuru Sudhakar v. Govt. of A.P. (2006) 8 SCC 161, Maru Ram v. Union of India (1981) 1 SCC 107, Kehar Singh v. Union of India (1989) 1 SCC 204, and Union of India v. V. Sriharan (2016) 7 SCC 1 — the Court reiterated the settled principles governing clemency:
- The President’s and Governor’s powers under Articles 72 and 161 are couched in the widest possible terms.
- Both must act on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers.
- Judicial review of such orders is confined to narrow grounds: non-application of mind, mala fides, reliance on extraneous or wholly irrelevant considerations, exclusion of relevant material, or arbitrariness.
Crucially, the Court clarified that what the petitioners (particularly Atbir Singh and the co-convicts in WP 198/2025) were really seeking was not judicial review on any of these narrow grounds, but an independent re-exercise of sentencing power by the Court itself over sentences already settled through presidential clemency — effectively asking the Court to sit in appeal over an executive act. This, the Court held, is impermissible.
On the Constitutionality of “Remainder of Natural Life” Sentences
The Court traced the jurisprudence on this special category of sentence:
- Section 53 read with Section 45 IPC (and their identical counterparts in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) define “life imprisonment” as imprisonment for the convict’s natural life, subject always to the possibility of remission or commutation under the Constitution.
- In Swamy Shraddananda (2) v. State of Karnataka (2008) 13 SCC 767, a three-judge Bench recognised that ordinary life imprisonment (which in practice often works out to about 14 years with remission) can be disproportionately lenient in cases falling just short of the “rarest of rare” threshold for death — and carved out a special category of sentence (life, or a term beyond 14 years, placed beyond the reach of ordinary remission) to avoid courts feeling “nudged” toward the death penalty for want of a proportionate middle option.
- This was affirmed by a Constitution Bench majority in Union of India v. V. Sriharan (2016) 7 SCC 1, which held the Shraddananda special category to be “well founded,” even though a minority view held that courts could not create a sentencing category beyond the scope of Section 433-A CrPC. Importantly, on the core meaning of “life imprisonment” — that it means imprisonment for the convict’s entire remaining life, subject to constitutional remission powers — all five judges were in agreement.
Given this settled Constitution Bench position, the Court found it “misuse, if not abuse of process” for the petitioners to challenge the validity of such sentences before a two-judge Bench. On the specific argument that such sentences defeat statutory remission rights under Section 432 CrPC, the Court clarified that ordinary life sentences (without an explicit “without remission” rider) leave Section 432 CrPC powers of the State fully intact; it is only in the select cases where courts or the President/Governor have expressly excluded remission — having regard to the gravity of the offence — that such applications would not lie, and that this carve-out itself does not offend the Constitution.
The petitioners’ reliance on Joseph v. State of Kerala (2023) was also distinguished: that case only held that the State Government cannot, by executive instruction, take away premature release altogether — it does not support a claim that courts or constitutional authorities are barred from imposing “without remission” sentences in appropriate cases.
The Outcome
All four writ petitions were dismissed:
- Ramasrey @ Fakkad and Chander Kant Jha had not even availed of statutory or constitutional remission remedies before approaching the Court directly under Article 32 — a further reason to decline entertaining their petitions.
- Atbir Singh, Sarabjit Singh, Gurdev Singh @ Baldev Singh and Satnam Singh — whose sentences had already been modified by the President — could point to no violation of the settled grounds of judicial review of clemency orders.
The Court held all four petitions to be “misdirected” and dismissed them accordingly.
Key Takeaways
- “Imprisonment for the remainder of natural life” is a constitutionally valid sentencing category, settled by a Constitution Bench majority in V. Sriharan, and is not open to challenge before smaller Benches.
- Ordinary life sentences leave statutory remission rights under Section 432 CrPC untouched; only sentences that expressly exclude remission — imposed with due regard to the gravity of the case — operate as an exception, and that exception is itself constitutional.
- Judicial review of presidential/gubernatorial clemency is narrow, limited to non-application of mind, mala fides, extraneous considerations, exclusion of relevant material, or arbitrariness — it is not an avenue for the Court to re-sentence a convict independently.
- Article 32, though a fundamental right in itself, is not a shortcut around statutory remission remedies or a route to have the Court sit in appeal over executive clemency decisions.
Conclusion
This judgment consolidates and reaffirms settled constitutional principles on two distinct but related fronts — the validity of life-without-remission sentencing as a proportionate middle path between ordinary life imprisonment and death, and the narrow, well-defined boundaries of judicial review over presidential and gubernatorial clemency. For convicts serving such sentences, the ruling is a reminder that the appropriate recourse lies in pursuing statutory remission applications through the prescribed constitutional and statutory channels, not in seeking a fresh, independent re-sentencing exercise from the Supreme Court under Article 32.
Case Details: Ramasrey @ Fakkad v. State of Uttar Pradesh, with connected Writ Petitions (Crl.) Nos. 42 of 2024, 69 of 2025 & 198 of 2025 2026 INSC 764 | Decided on 29th July 2026 | Bench: Justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih | With the assistance of the Attorney General for India
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